ABSTRACT
Whether raising a barn or waging war, the ability for individuals to work together towards a common purpose is truly one of humankind's greatest miracles. Working together, and how that cooperation manifests itself, is what the study of social cohesion is all about, and when cohesion fails at the societal level, the state is clearly weakened as a consequence. Political stability, for Buzan, can more usefully be cast in terms of political cohesion, running from strong to weak. Buzan defines a strong state as having closely integrated and stable state-society relations. A modern state is the standard Westphalian model, defined by strong government control over society. Several empirical measures have been developed that attempt to measure the strength of the state, but each is dependent upon a certain way of thinking about the state. Measures range, some focusing upon how a state performs certain tasks, while others are interested in what a state produces.
